Decision support system

Decision
support systems are a class of computerized information system that assist and
supports business and organizational decision-making activities.A usual decision support system would be an
interactive computer software that helps decision makers gather raw data,
documents, experience, knowledge, and business models, to identify and solve
problems as well as making business decisions.Typical types of information that can be acquired using a DSS can be
inventory, current and past sales, projected sales, and consequences for
alternative decisions.

Different
orders of decision support systems exist.Daniel Power states that those are communication-driven DSS, data-driven
DSS, document-driven DSS, knowledge-driven DSS, and model-driven DSS.A communication-driven DSS supports multiple
people working on a shared task; for example, Microsoft’s Netmeeting or
Groove.A data-driven DSS emphasizes
access to and manipulation of a time series of internal company data and
sometimes, external data.A document-driven
DSS manages, retrieves, and manipulates unstructured information in a variety
of electronic formats.A
knowledge-driven DSS offers specialized problem-solving expertise stored as
facts, rules, and procedures.Lastly, a
model-driven DSS emphasizes and manipulation of statistical, financial,
optimization, or simulation model.

The
architecture of the decision support systems consists of three things.The first is the database, which contains
numerous amounts of information.The
second is the model which is overall structure.Lastly, we have the user interface which provides the means of input and
output.As for the components, the decision
support system classifies them as inputs, user and knowledge expertise,
outputs, and decisions.Inputs are the
factors, numbers, and characters that are to analyze.User and knowledge expertise are inputs
requiring manual analysis by the user.Outputs are transformed data in which DSS “decisions” are
generated.And the decisions are the results
generated by the DSS based on user criteria.

There
are plenty of uses for decision support systems.Medical centers Clinical decision support
systems for medical diagnosis.In
business and management, decision support systems are used to track business
trends, performance, resource allocation, etc.Another notable use would be for sustainable agriculture.The DSS has been used here to maintain proper
farming policy levels.These uses come
with many benefits as well.DSS improves
efficiency, expedites problem solving, facilitates interpersonal communication,
promotes learning and training, increases organizational control, generates new
evidence in support of a decision, creates a competitive advantage over
competition, encourages exploration and discovery on the part of the decision
maker, and reveals new approaches to thinking about the problem.